You’ve Got Mail

Okay, let’s get one thing straight up front: That enchanting woman you met in a chat room, the one who uses the name "Angel" as her online identity and has inspired your every daydream for the past month, is not Meg Ryan. She does not have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a cute little button nose. What she does have, in real life, is a bad case of acne, a bedroom filled to the ceiling with every single back issue of Fangoria magazine, and an extremely unhealthy attachment to her mother. In real life, her name is Clarence, and she’s a fourteen-year-old boy.

In Hollywood, though, she’s Meg Ryan, and you are Tom Hanks, and your souls speak to one another in perfect harmony.

If you can get past that central conceit in You’ve Got Mail, the new film from the writer/director and lead actors that brought you Sleepless in Seattle, you’ll find it a cute movie. Unfortunately, it’s also very uneven and fairly predictable.

Meg Ryan plays Kathleen Kelly, the owner of a charming little children’s bookstore that has been a part of New York’s Greenwich Village for over 40 years. Passed down to Kathleen by her mother, the store is a magical place filled with laughter, love, and fond memories—and it is about to be pushed out of business by a Big Bad Chain Store.

Tom Hanks plays prickly Joe Fox, proprietor of said chain store and nemesis of Kathleen…at least in person. Online, Fox goes by the name NY152, Kathleen by the handle "Shopgirl," and the two of them have unwittingly fallen in love over the course of their anonymous chats. The questions posed by this setup—will they discover each other’s identity? Will they be able to work through their differences and live happily ever after?—are purely rhetorical; the movie’s job is to make the viewer’s journey to its inevitable conclusion an enjoyable and rewarding one. Sadly, the film only partially succeeds.

Following her underappreciated, darker role in Addicted to Love, Ryan returns to standard America’s Sweetheart form as Kathleen. Spunky yet vulnerable, a tad bit naïve, her character provides the film’s heart. Where the emotions ring true, it is largely to her credit—and, even where they do not, the woman is just so damn likable it’s hard not to forgive her.

Tom Hanks generally has just as high a likability quotient as Meg Ryan, but he has his work cut out for him in this role. His Joe Fox is brash and ruthless in business, rude and selfish in person, yet supposedly still a big teddy bear on the inside. It is a difficult transition to make seem convincing, and Hanks struggles to make the role believable. Memo to Tom: the American public will never buy you as selfish and ruthless. We didn’t buy it in Bonfire of the Vanities, and we don’t buy it here. Sorry, but there are worse things we could believe about you than that your heart is pure and noble.

The fault is not so much that of Hanks, though, than of the script itself. Director Nora Ephron co-wrote it with her sister Delia, and the material is simply not as strong as Sleepless in Seattle. Many of the scenes simply feel routine: Here’s the montage where Joe and Kathleen keep crossing paths for our benefit, not seeing each other, never having met yet, and not knowing they’re each the other’s online crush (Wow, look at what a meandering route Joe takes to work, that he is able to coincidentally cross Kathleen’s path four different times in the same morning!). Here’s the scene where Joe brags about putting a tiny bookshop out of business, to show us what a heartless cad he is. Here’s the scene of Kathleen reading to the little children in her store, to show us what a kind heart she has.

The dialogue, too, is not as strong as it could be. Some of the couple’s online banter is amusing (Hanks does a very funny Brando impression while explaining the universal significance of The Godfather movie, for example), but much of it feels contrived or just tired (Starbucks forces you to make a lot of decisions about your coffee!). Their spats in person are stronger, particularly a scene in which Kathleen—always one to think of that stinging retort hours after she actually needs it—finally spits out a zinger of a comeback to Joe right when she needs it, only to be mortified by the hurt she inflicts. Moments like this resonate strongly with the audience, and show us what the film could have been with a tighter script.

Despite its weaknesses, the film is helped by the tremendous likability of its two leads, and by excellent supporting performances by Greg Kinnear and Parker Posey. Kinnear plays Kathleen’s boyfriend Frank, a pretentious journalist in love with his supposed "way with words" and out of touch with the 20th century. Posey plays Joe’s girlfriend Patricia, a chic, ruthless, and equally pretentious book editor in Manhattan. Watching the interplay between these two side characters at a cocktail party—Patricia sucking up to Frank as a potential client, and Frank melting at the praise and attention from a respected editor—makes you wish they’d been given more screen time.

You’ve Got Mail has several bright spots, but they do not add up to a cohesive whole. Moments of real, convincing emotion are followed by scenes that are overly contrived and feel hollow. The last half hour in particular feels rushed and unconvincing, with both lead characters making drastic changes in attitude and temperament in the space of no time at all. Nonetheless, the big Moment of Discovery still brings a tear to the eyes, a credit to the sheer power of blue eyes, blonde hair, and a two-time Oscar-winning costar to overcome all obstacles.